www.adjie.net - life: cambodia & vietnam trip

June 11-19, 2004

yes! finally we had another holiday...

this time was to cambodia & vietnam. we left singapore to siem reap - cambodia, june 11th. the main attraction in siem reap is the angkors (temple or i would say ruins of temple). we were there for 3 days, wandering around in the ruins; angkor wat, bayon, angkor thom, ta prohm, banteay srei etc.

on the 14th we travelled by boat to cambodia's capital: phnom penh. it was quite a surprising ride though, it cost us 25us$/each, they picked us up at our hotel 5.30am by an old van, the driver doesn't speak english (ooops) and by the time we reached the fisherman village to board the boat, he didn't even bother to help us find the boat (there were so many boats over there). well, anyway, we managed to find the boat though. the boat left the village to a 'floating terminal' where we board bigger boat.
then another surprise... in the middle of the journey, three boats (including ours) gathered around, and then some passengers started to move to another boat, since most of the passengers were moving; we just followed them with question marks circling our heads

(what the h*ll is going on here?). in 'new' boat we didn't see any empty seat, so we just had to sit on the roof of the boat, and within seconds the roof was full of passengers too...
after a few hours of sun-burned and rained too; finally around 3.30pm we reached phnom penh... (fiuh..) and did i mention that snacks, or even water were not served during this boat trip? yup; they didn't serve anything, and we didn't have the time to have breakfast that morning... we were still considering ourselves lucky since at least we brought some water...

phnom penh - we went to royal palace, toul sleng genocide museum, and the killing fields. after the last two mentioned trips, we were agree that the most fierce, scary, brutall, cruel creature on earth was not great white shark, it wasn't alien either (if they exist); the creature is human, yes, us - greatest killer of the earth. beside those 'attraction' places, we found that phnom penh is a nice place to relax and hang out. it has some nice cafes, which serve good food and relaxing atmosphere..

on the 16th we left phnom penh (by air) to ho chi minh - vietnam. here's what we found about this city: bad thing: it's a big city with a chaotic road traffic. most people use motorcycle, there were millions of them, and they were everywhere at anytime... good things: their handicrafts are nice and unique and there were a lot of handycraft shops. the city is considerably safe, we went sight seeing every night (until late) around the city by foot, and we didn't see or encounter any crime. there were also some policemen standing by at some places in the city too, made us feel comfortable to walk around.

19th... time to head home, back to reality. we really enjoyed this trip, we had seen different things over there; the bad deeds and great achievements of human beings. as for the surprises, we kinda like it, it makes our journeys more colourful and fun.